Evaluating Mitigation for Sentencing

Live Online Training

January 22, 2025 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM EST

While there are clear legal standards and forensic best practices for mitigation in capital cases, attorneys are increasingly requesting mitigation evaluations for non-capital cases as well. This virtual, three-hour training introduces the legal and clinical bases for evaluating mitigation for sentencing. We discuss key court cases and legal frameworks, evaluation parameters, ethical considerations, report-writing strategies, and the focal role of traumatic stress in mitigation evaluations. Participants can earn up to 3 APA-approved CEUs.

Please contact us for detailed information about the days schedule.

Learning Objectives

• Participants will be able to describe the ways in which ethical guidelines (from the Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology) shape the scope and focus of mitigation evaluations.

• Participants will be ale to explain the ways that mitigation evaluations address a broad scope of potential information, to answer a narrow referral question.

• Participants will be able to describe the legal background and history of sentencing in federal and state systems.

• Participants will be able to explain the legal parameters of presentencing mitigation evaluations.

• Participants will be able to describe core research findings about traumatic stress as relevant to mitigation evaluations.

• Participants will evaluate different models and case examples relating traumatic stress to a mitigation referral question.

Instructors

Daniel Murrie, PhD, serves as Director of UVA's Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy.  He is also a Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences in the UVA School of Medicine.  He oversees the ILPPP’s training programs in forensic evaluation and the postdoctoral fellowship in forensic psychology.  As a clinician, he performs forensic evaluations through the ILPPP’s Forensic Psychiatry Clinic.  As a scholar, his research and teaching address a variety of topics in forensic psychology, particularly topics addressing reliability, bias, and quality improvement in forensic evaluation.

Sharon Kelley, JD, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the ILPPP. Her primary clinical and research interests involve forensic evaluation and defendants’ legal competencies. She has published and presented on a range of topics in these areas, including juveniles’ and adults’ Miranda comprehension, disputed confessions, and adjudicative competence. She is also part of a research team that investigates cognitive bias in forensic science disciplines as part of a larger research program to improve the scientific underpinnings of forensic science. Prior to working at ILPPP, she completed a clinical internship at University of Massachusetts Medical School and a postdoctoral fellowship in forensic psychology at the University of Virginia. She has worked in psychiatric hospitals, juvenile justice facilities, jails, outpatient clinics, and primary care centers.

Lucy Guarnera, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist employed as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy (ILPPP) at the University of Virginia, where she conducts psychological research and forensic evaluations on a variety of topics. These include immigration evaluations, evaluations of psychological injury, and other types of evaluations involving assessment of traumatic stress among juveniles and adults. Dr. Guarnera completed her predoctoral internship at the Charleston Consortium, where she specialized in the assessment and treatment of traumatic stress in children and adults (e.g., at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center at the Medical University of South Carolina and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center). She then completed a formal postdoctoral fellowship in forensic psychology at the ILPPP. As a researcher, Dr. Guarnera has co-authored peer-reviewed journal articles on traumatic events and responses among youth and adults, with a specialty in sexual violence and intimate partner violence. She is the co-author of a chapter on “PTSD and the law: Forensic considerations” in a leading academic text on PTSD (Handbook of PTSD, Third Edition [2021], The Guilford Press). She is also the juvenile training coordinator at the ILPPP, where she organizes trainings for forensic professionals on a variety of issues involving adolescent examinees.

Neither the instructors nor the program planning committee (Daniel Murrie, Ph.D., Lucy Guarnera, Ph.D., & Angela Torres, Ph.D.,) have any conflicts of interest or commercial support to disclose.

Continuing Education

Participants are eligible for up to 3 hours of continuing education credits (CEUs) approved by the American Psychological Association (APA). ILPPP is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. ILPPP maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

You must join by 1:15 pm and stay for the duration of the presentation in order to recevie the CE credits.

CE credits are applicable for licensed psychologists; other disciplines will need to check the relevant statutes and guidance regarding whether or not this can count towards any CE requirement.

Training Fees

• $150: Standard registration

• $75: Employees of Virginia DBHDS or a Community Services Board (CSB)

Please note that the reduced rate is available only for DBHDS and CSB employees, rather than all state employees, because DBHDS partially sponsors this training program.

Occasionally large facilities or state agencies outside Virginia want to send a team of trainees, for whom we can arrange a discounted group rate. Please contact us to discuss such arrangements.

How to Register

Scroll to the top of the page to register via the Eventbrite checkout. You will receive the Zoom link closer to the date of training and detailed attendance instructions.

Cancellation Policy

You may cancel your registration up to 7 days before the event starts. Your confirmation email will have information on how to cancel. All refunds will be assessed by Eventbrite's service fee. This fee is 6.6% of the registration price + $1.79. This fee will be assessed regardless of when the cancellation occurs in relation to the date of the training.

Please allow 30 days to receive a refund. Refunds will be processed according to the original payment method.